Yes, Virginia, they really are out there. Whether or not I’d call them “designers” is debatable but their existence is undeniable. Anyone who claims to have done wonders using Word as their design platform probably has no idea what design means, is, or how it’s done.
Microsoft Word is, without question, a superb word processing application. It’s the perfect choice when doing any documents involving large quantities of text that need creation or editing. It’s the elite program for office work, correspondence, memos, and even neighborhood announcements. It’s spectacular as part of a superior suite of applications designed to be used in an office environment and meets the needs there beautifully.
Word, however, is not a design application. It has minimal formatting capabilities and utterly destroys any graphic files used within it’s confines. Embedding an image of any sort in a Word document renders the image useless in any other application. The degradation is intentional and unrecoverable, if you haven’t kept a copy of the original source file. If you have, you can use that file in another application without loss of quality. Trying to copy an image from Word to use anywhere else will result in disaster.
I learned all of this first-hand while working in Corporate America. I used to work for a company where I was told to use Word to design/layout/format workbooks, stationery, fliers, brochures, and manuscripts. I suggested that they get InDesign for the layout/format work and use Word for the office documents and manuscripts (no typesetting or presentation formatting involved). I earned myself a benign smile as they told me that $600 was too much to spend on an application when Word could do the same thing.
They didn’t understand, anymore than other Word “designers” apparently do, that Word couldn’t do the same thing at all. Their bottom line was up front costs and they didn’t realize that it cost them more in the long run in terms of time–my time since it took me longer to finagle the documents in Word than it would have taken me to do in either InDesign or Quark.
In all things, using the right tools for the job is not only a good idea, it’s smart. Why on earth would someone try to use a spade where a trowel is the best tool for the job? Sure, the spade will turn the dirt but the trowel will do it quicker, more efficiently, and more competently.
I see the same thing with Web Design. People who think because they figured out how to buy a template and use it they are now “web site designers.” Anyone can buy a template (I’m even going to be offering some myself soon) and if it’s a good template customizing it to use for your site is a breeze. That, however, does not mean you know how to design a site. The actual designer was the person who designed your template! That’s the person who understands navigation, css, html, and image preparation.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with using templates. Most designers develop their own set of templates to use to save them time as well. However, it is unethical to call yourself a web site designer when all you do is buy someone else’s design and then turn around and get paid to plug-n-play their content.
For those who are sitting there wondering “How can I tell the difference?” Look at prices. If someone is offering an entire site solution (design, hosting, domain name, maintenance, etc) for $29.95, start looking at their work hard. If you see the same layouts over and over, or you look at the source (View | Source) and see something like:
<meta name=”generator” content=”Starfield Technologies; WebSite Tonight 3.3.9″/>
you can be almost certain that this is not an original design no matter how the template user refers to themselves. A quick search for Website Tonight shows that Starfield Technologies is offering a turnkey solution and it is that, that the so-called “designer” is selling w/o being explicit about it.
Some would call this deceptive practice but I’ll just say it’s not quite what it would seem to be.
Be careful when shopping for a designer; make sure the person who calls themselves a designer, or offers designer services, is really providing you with actual design services. While the price may reflect a non-design service sometimes it doesn’t and you can find yourself forking out a lot of money for a small return.
